HONG KONG (Reuters) - China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, the world's largest telecom-equipment maker, plans to invest 1 billion yuan ($145 million) over the next three year to develop artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for its cloud business, it said on Friday.

Zheng Yelai, president of Huawei's cloud unit, also said the company planned to start offering public cloud service in South Africa, as it is "a strong base from which to develop cloud business in the African continent".

Huawei established BU in 2017 to go into the public cloud service market in China, currently dominated by Alibaba.